


Once  Upon a Time

by XWingAce



Category: Fairy Tales and Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: F/F, Parody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-31
Updated: 2011-07-31
Packaged: 2017-10-22 01:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/232068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XWingAce/pseuds/XWingAce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fairy Tale Country has rules. When you're a third son, you get the girl. When you're a young girl with a grandmother who lives in the woods, you marry a forester or a hunter. And when you're an old woman with no-one to support her, you go live in those woods. But what if you don't agree with that?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Once  Upon a Time

**Author's Note:**

> My first and so far only original short story (for certain values of original). It was originally written for the doujinshi [Bedtime Stories](http://www.archonia.com/index.php?page=article&aid=48867), a collection of fairytale-themed comics and illustrated short stories by the Dutch doujinshi-circle [OpenMinded](http://www.op-minded.com/). It's been a long time since that was released, so I thought I might give this a little wider publication. This text is slightly reworked, and of course the original has illustrations.
> 
>  **Credit:** dune_drd and fenko for their betaing, and ocreana, sereighna, fenko and all the others at OpenMinded for their support and comments.

Once upon a time…

Just the fact that the story starts with these words means it’s set in the land of fairy tales. That, in turn, means you can’t swing a talking cat without hitting some cursed princess or other, or else a prince with presumably honorable intentions towards said princess. And if the prince is too busy slaying dragons, then offer your condolences to the farm boy. If he’s gotten far enough to ask for the princess’ hand, then you can bet the farm he grew up on that he’s been preceded by two of his brothers with rather less success.

So, once again: once upon a time, there was a farmer’s wife.

She had married the hunter who had rescued her from a ravening wolf when she was still very young. The hunter had retired from hunting and together they had started up a farm. Their marriage had been happy and fertile, with two sons and a daughter following each other in rapid succession. But after the third son presented himself, a feeling of unease began to set in. The farmer's wife knew just as well as anyone what happened in families with three sons.

Sure enough, when the eldest son had reached the age of eighteen, he indicated that he didn’t want to be a farmer for life, and that he would find his fortune elsewhere. His younger brother followed him a year later. Neither was ever seen again. The youngest son followed his brothers the day after his sixteenth birthday. Two years later, the news that he had won the hand of the princess from an adjacent kingdom reached the concerned parents.

The couple’s daughter married the woodcutter who had rescued her from yet another traumatic incident with a wolf. Though marital bliss reigned, even after five years the union hadn’t led to children. The farmer’s wife had always had her doubts about that woodcutter and his insistence on calling himself a lumberjack.

Now her husband had died. Normally, the only option for a widow would be to sell the farm and take up residence in a small hut in the forest. The lucky ones would receive visits from their grandchildren. She didn’t have any and was unlikely to get them either. Even if she _had_ had grandchildren, she didn't want to expose her granddaughters to the same wolfish predations she herself had suffered. So her fate would be to die in her own oven.

She didn’t want that, either. Not only was she far too young to start living like a hermit, she didn’t have any inclination to start luring in young orphans in order to fatten them up for consumption. That’s what cows, pigs and rabbits were for. But she couldn’t run the farm on her own. The work was too much for one person, and the hands wouldn’t listen to a woman during harvest. She would have to think of something else.

She sold the land to yet another hunter wanting to retire with his much younger bride. Then she filled a pack with food and clothing, took a long knife and her husband’s bow and arrows for security and set out for the big city. There might be another life to be had there.

The city was four days’ walking distance from her farm, and only if one took the short route through the forest. This was discouraged, however, because of the wolves roaming under the trees. Not that most little girls on their way to their grandmothers paid any attention to these warnings, of course.  
The farmer’s wife had barely set foot into the woods before the first wolf presented itself, predictably chasing after a girl instantly visible in her bright red hood. A familiar sight. She nocked an arrow, aimed, and loosed on the wolf. Unused to the draw of the bow, she missed. But she wasn’t entirely without practice, and the second one clipped the wolf on the back haunch. That halted it long enough that her third arrow hit it squarely, killing it.

The girl had paused to thank her rescuer. “Thank you, brave hunter,” she said demurely, and only then looked up. “You're a woman!” she exclaimed, shocked by the sight. “That's not what should happen! Who will I marry now?”

“I don't know,” the farmer’s wife said. “Perhaps now you can choose for yourself. Come, I will take you to your mother.”

The girl followed reluctantly, protesting that in order to choose for herself, she would first have to meet men other than her brothers or farmhands. The farmer’s wife didn’t listen to her. They reached her house to find the girl’s mother waiting for them. Her reaction to seeing a female hunter was much the same as her daughter’s. The farmer’s wife was given some food and asked to move on as soon as possible. So she did. It was none of her business.

That evening, she shared a campfire with a young man on his way to, in his words, ‘a better life’. The farmer’s wife contributed her food and told him stories of her sons. She hoped they would do him some good. Since he talked about an older and a younger brother, she doubted it. He offered to loan her his cloak for the night. She offered to share it, but he refused. Silly boy, this way they both lost body heat. She wrapped up as best she could in the cloak and slept well. The following morning they said their goodbyes and each went their own way.  
After two hours of walking, the farmer’s wife passed a mill. In front of it sat an old tomcat.

“Good morning,” said the cat.

Entirely unsurprised that the cat could talk -- these things happen in fairytale land -- she returned the greeting. Then she asked why he was sitting out here instead of catching mice inside. The cat told her that the mill’s old owner had died and left the mill to his only son, who had bought a terrier, better at catching mice and rats than the cat. And the dog had chased the cat from the mill.

“You could come with me,” the farmer’s wife suggested. Talking cats brought good fortune to those who managed to befriend them.

The cat mewled disapprovingly. “I do not want to be a witch’s cat,” he said. “You die too easily.”

There was never any point in arguing with a cat, so the farmer’s wife pointed it toward the young man she had left this morning. As a second son, it didn’t matter what happened to him, as long as he didn’t accomplish what he set out to do. Maybe the cat could better his fate. The cat thanked her and went on its way.

That afternoon, the girl caught up with her. Her mother had sent her to visit her grandmother again. But the girl had decided she didn’t want to be attacked by wolves anymore, so she asked the farmer’s wife if she could come along to the city. She agreed.  
They walked on and reached the city without further incident, a fact almost miraculous in itself. The farmer’s wife applied to any guild she thought she might have the skills for: the Seamstresses’ Guild, the Apothecaries’ Guild (plenty of doctoring to be done around a farm) and the Butchers’ Guild. None of them would accept her for being either too old, too unskilled, or too female. The Seamstresses’ Guild would have accepted the girl, who refused because she didn’t want to work there alone. And the work wasn’t what she had expected it to be.

They stayed in the city for a month, looking for work, none as permanent or as satisfying as they wanted. Living in the city was expensive. If they stayed here, the money the farmer’s wife had gotten from selling her farm would run out far too soon. The farmer’s wife decided she would rather keep travelling. She could find her surviving son, and settle in his kingdom. The girl decided to accompany her.

The journey took months, through forests and fields and the occasional river. They stopped in cities and worked for a few weeks before moving on. They were on the road when a harsher winter than either had ever experienced struck . The farmer’s wife had to use her bow again to fight off a number of hungry wolves from the girl, and the girl used the knife the farmer’s wife had given her to skin the three that she killed. The skins kept them warm for a night, pressed closely together to conserve more warmth.

The next day, the skins bought them a stay in an inn until the worst of the snowstorms had passed. The innkeeper looked very oddly at two women travelling together through the winter storms, and killing wolves at that. The farmer’s wife had to show him that she could use the bow she carried before he would stop accusing them of theft. Still, he asked them to leave as soon as the road was passable again. And they gladly went.

By the next spring, they arrived in the kingdom the farmer’s son had made his home, and eventually found the castle with the directions of another talking cat, who wanted them out of the way before they could spoil his plans.

At the castle, the guards would not let them in until the farmer’s wife cried out her son’s name as he passed in the royal carriage. It stopped and her son came out to embrace his mother.

Now her arrival was celebrated, and she received a position at the court as befitted the mother of the next king. The disposition of the girl caused some headaches for the masters of etiquette, but eventually she was given a position as the farmer’s wife’s personal servant.

The nobles at court soon started whispering behind the farmer’s wife’s back about her lack of proper etiquette and her general behavior as if she were a man: going out hunting with the prince, speaking without being asked and eating more than the absolute minimum, for example. Worse, not rebuking her servant when she made a mistake!

Her son spoke up for her when he could, but of course the courtiers took care not to insult her where he would see. And of course, he couldn't afford to offend _too_ many nobles himself. There were always ways that a knife could find its way into the body of an unpopular king. With the princess pregnant, the succession had already been assured, and there were plenty of nobles ready to take on the title of regent. They probably thought they could do a better job of ruling the kingdom than some farmboy.

The farmer’s wife quickly grew tired of the manufactured scandal and the confines of the royal court. The final straw was when she appeared at the naming of her granddaughter in what she thought was her finest dress (with all attending restrictive boning and worries about staining or damaging it) and found the ladies-in-waiting struggling and failing to contain their giggles. When later a baron ‘accidentally’ spilled red wine over her skirts, she had to restrain the urge to smack the man in the face there and then more tightly than her corsets did her stomach. It was clear to her then. She would never fit in here, either.

She took her leave from the castle the next day, dressed in a man’s clothes again, and carrying a knife and bow. She disappeared into the forests, and the girl walked with her. They were never heard of again. Presumably they lived happily. But ever after?

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> Then there is the tale in the next kingdom of a hunter with long grey hair and his young wife appearing out of nowhere to start a farm. They adopted a boy and a girl, driven from their own house by their stepmother, and lived happily ever after indeed.


End file.
